OWINGS MILLS, Md. — When it comes to Father’s Day, Orlando Brown Jr. doesn’t do anything special since his dad died seven years ago.

Brown will call his mother as well as his brothers and sisters.

“I just take time and remember,” Brown said.

For Brown, he honors his father’s memory beyond one day. Every time Brown steps onto the Baltimore Ravens practice field, he is following his father’s footsteps.

Brown is playing for the same team, lining up at the same right tackle spot and wearing the same No. 78 as the 11-year veteran affectionately known as “Zeus.”

An important piece of that legacy is still hidden on the football field. The biggest symbol of Brown’s emotional bond with his father is a bandanna that’s tucked under his helmet and can be traced back to one of his saddest days.

On Sept. 23, 2011, his father died in his Baltimore home at the age of 40 from diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that can lead to kidney failure or cause fluid to build up in the brain. When Brown arrived there, he noticed a Ravens equipment bag on the bed that was filled with football gloves and cleats. It also included a white bandanna, which struck a chord with his son.

“He always told me and preached that, ‘You play offensive line; you have to have your own swag. You have to make yourself noticeable, because nobody notices offensive linemen,'” Brown said. “So it was just something [that] I adapted, and from there, it just holds a lot of value.”

Brown remembers his father always wearing that white bandanna, sometimes tying it around his ankle or wrist. To Brown, that piece of cloth represented a piece of his father.

At every practice and game, Brown would wrap a bandanna around his head before strapping on his helmet. This past season, he went with a black one that sported red roses, his father’s favorite flower.

“That became his signature because that was his dad’s, and his dad was a warrior,” Brown’s mother, Mira, told ESPN last year. “He wears that bandanna because this is what my dad would’ve wanted me to do.”

The Browns are the 40th known pair of father and son to play for the same NFL team and the fourth current one, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

Brown and his father have similar gargantuan size — 6-foot-8 and 340-plus pounds — and a similar playing style, with a nasty edge. But they’re different players with different pedigrees.

Orlando Brown Sr. was a defensive lineman until he switched to offensive tackle for his senior season at South Carolina State. He signed with the Cleveland Browns after going undrafted, and he quickly gained a reputation as the meanest player on the team. Brown started so many fights in practice as a rookie that coach Bill Belichick sometimes had him practice in only a T-shirt and shorts while the rest of the team wore helmets and pads.

The battle to fill that void is between Brown and James Hurst, who started at left guard last season. This offseason, Brown worked his way into lining up at right tackle with the first team and he finished there as the mandatory minicamp wrapped up. It’s the same spot on the Ravens at which his father started 80 games during his two stints in Baltimore (1996-98 and 2003-05).

“I think he’s going to be tremendous,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said of Brown on Adam Schefter’s podcast. “I don’t ever remember going into a game, no matter who we were playing — Auburn, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, you name it — and worried about his matchup on that side. He has a love for the game, a hunger and just a true grit about him that you want from all your great offensive linemen. I have a lot of belief in that kid.”

Nightmare path to achieving dream

Brown went from being touted as the best offensive tackle in the draft to the biggest disaster story at the NFL combine.

The numbers that drew the most scrutiny were his 14 repetitions at 225 pounds on the bench press (the fewest of any offensive lineman this year) and his 5.85-second 40-yard dash (the third slowest since 2006).

The social media blitz was merciless, from a derogatory tweet in German to Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger taking a shot at him. Brown said he had to take a break from Twitter because of “so many 12-year-olds telling me they’re stronger than me.”

“It was surprising for me,” Brown said. “My performance at the combine wasn’t even what I expected to do at all — not even close.”

All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone forgot he was the two-time Big 12 Offensive Lineman of the Year and didn’t allow a sack last season.

“He has one bad day,” said Ravens rookie tight end Mark Andrews, who was Brown’s teammate at Oklahoma. “Obviously, you see his pro day was a lot better, but the guy’s a dog; he’s a beast. [He] should’ve been a first-round pick, no doubt. But he is where he is. Now he has to make the best of what he’s got, and he’s going to thrive.”

After Brown was the seventh offensive tackle drafted, the Ravens made the point that they focus more on the tape than the numbers at the combine. As assistant general manager Eric DeCosta said, offensive linemen don’t have to run 40 yards very often.

“[He’s] just a very, very good player — physical, tough, mean, nasty, didn’t get beat — just a type of guy that we had success with in the past,” DeCosta said.

Special homecoming

Brown wasn’t selected in the first round, but he couldn’t be happier with where he ended up in the draft.

Born the same year as the Ravens franchise (1996), Brown can recount his memories of watching Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and Jamal Lewis practice. He also remembers the times his father knocked over teammates during practice.

Edwin Mulitalo, a former Ravens guard who played on the same line as “Zeus,” had been previously selected to announce Baltimore’s third-round pick. In the green room, he peeked in the envelope.

“I did a double take looking at his name,” Mulitalo said. “Then it clicked.”

During Brown’s pre-draft visit, he handed general manager Ozzie Newsome a note that included a message about how special it would be if he were to play for the Ravens. One team official said Brown would’ve signed right away if that had been a recruiting trip.

“Knowing Zeus, he would be so proud to have this come full circle,” Mulitalo said.

Training together leading up to the draft, Brown told Andrews how amazing it would be if he was selected by Baltimore.

“It’s almost a dream come true for him,” Andrews said. “It’s really special. It’s one of those cool things that you see in sports. You can’t take that for granted.”

Brown’s father pushed him to be the best in some unusual ways. He told his son that he would leave his games if he didn’t start playing harder. He once made his son promise to be a 10-year NFL veteran and a Hall of Famer.

There was also the time Orlando Brown Sr. used Adam Sandler as motivation. Sitting down his son, he put in the movie “The Waterboy” because he wanted him to play like the angry, underdog linebacker Bobby Boucher.

Brown carries all those memories of his father, along with a bandanna, as he begins his NFL career.

“My biggest wish right now is I wish he could see it,” Brown said. “At the end of the day, that’s my motivation for getting to this point and continuing to make sure I carry on his legacy.”

Madrid – As Cristiano Ronaldo milked every last drop of his moment on the microphone at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday night, it was hard to imagine this was a player about to leave Real Madrid.

Real’s players were introduced one-by-one onto the podium and when Ronaldo’s moment came, a gap left after “Cristiano” for the delirious fans to fill, he predictably made the most of it.

A Portugal flag draped over his shoulders, Ronaldo pirouetted before counting out on his fingers to five, the number of Champions League titles he now owns.

He pulled out the badge on his shirt and kissed it, twice, before blowing a few more kisses to the crowd. By now they were chanting “Cristiano” and some of the Real players were joining in.

Even when Marcelo, the next one out, emerged, the grinning Ronaldo strutted back down the walkway to welcome him with the pair’s familiar celebratory dance.

This Ronaldo was almost unrecognisable from the one that had, less than 24 hours before, been prickly and restless, as he insisted he could leave Real, despite them just beating Liverpool to mark a third consecutive European triumph.

Even amid wrangling contract negotiations, a frosty relationship with president Florentino Perez, a perceived lack of support in his row with Spanish tax authorities and perhaps even jealousy over Real´s courting of Neymar, his timing was inexplicably bad.

Zinedine Zidane had summed up the mood. “I’m not thinking about that now,” he said.

Microphone in hand, however, Ronaldo was back at the centre of things on Sunday and this time his message was different.

“What can I say?” he said over the supporters’ cheers. “You have given us so much love in every single match. It’s an honour to play for the biggest club in the world, that’s the truth, it’s an honour.”

As the fans roared, Real’s players bounced around Ronaldo, chanting “Cristiano, quedate”, “Cristiano, stay”, and soon the whole stadium was singing too.

When Ronaldo resumed, the big screen briefly catching a stoney-faced Gareth Bale next to a beaming Casemiro, he said: “Thank you, this is very important to me. I am so happy with your passion, the passion of the players and coaches.

“What I like most is winning. So for one last time, one, two three – Hala Madrid!”

Earlier, in the Plaza de Cibeles, he had signed off a more modest speech with: “Thank you guys and see you next year.”

At euphoric events like these, there must always be a pull to draw the biggest cheer, but Ronaldo’s behaviour at least suggests Real could satisfy the 33-year-old if they want to.

He reportedly seeks a new deal in line with Lionel Messi’s at Barcelona and Neymar’s at PSG.

But Perez was not impressed by Ronaldo’s posturing on Saturday. “We hear the same every summer,” Perez said. “And then nothing happens.”

In 2012, Ronaldo said he was “sad” and last year, Portugese newspaper A Bola claimed the forward wanted to leave, unhappy with the club not backing him in the face of tax investigators.

Perez and Ronaldo need each other, but neither will want to be seen to have lost the argument. At the very least, Real’s celebrations showed nothing has been decided yet.

METAIRIE, La. — Forget Mike, Will and Sam. The New Orleans Saints should just label all of their linebackers, “Alpha.”

After signing Demario Davis to a three-year, $24 million contract in free agency, the Saints now have four guys with a history of playing middle linebacker and serving as the signal-calling “quarterback of the defense” in the NFL with the communication device in their helmets.

Last year they added A.J. Klein and Manti Te’o. The year before that, it was Craig Robertson. And second-year weakside linebacker Alex Anzalone served that role for a while in college.

It remains to be seen how the Saints will use all of them — especially since they spend most of their time in nickel defense with only two linebackers on the field.

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But it’s clear they like having as many of those alpha types in the room as possible. As linebackers coach Mike Nolan put it, they consider it “a good problem to have.”

“You know, when we use the term ‘green dot’ sometimes, people think about the helmet on the field,” Nolan said of the green sticker that identifies which player is wearing the communication device on game days. “But we also talk about it in the way of, ‘This guy is a leader.’ We have a number of guys with leadership skills [and Davis] does have that. That did make his stock and his value greater.

“What’s nice is we have about four or five guys that could wear it. Some teams sit there and they’re fighting over two guys or they’re thinking, ‘We really don’t have a guy that takes charge.’ In our case, I think we’ve got five guys that can wear it, if not six.”

Of course the Saints’ linebackers are all saying the right things about how competition brings out the best in everyone and they’re willing to play wherever the coaches ask — as you would expect from veteran leaders and captains.

But they also readily admit they take a lot of pride in being counted on as that quarterback of the defense who never leaves the field.

“You know, all of us want that headset,” said Te’o, who wore it with the San Diego Chargers before Klein primarily wore it in New Orleans last season when healthy. “I think it’s not just to have that responsibility, but to have that trust [from coaches and teammates].”

“You know, how I’m built, I guess at the core of me I’ve always been ‘the’ guy. But that’s not why I’m here,” said the 29-year-old Davis, who said he was drawn to the Saints because of their history of success and great offensive play after he didn’t get to experience much of either in six years with the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns. “This team has been in a great place for years, and I’m here to win. So wherever the coaches need me, I’m here to serve, I’m down with it, I’m 100 percent cool with it.”

Davis and Klein, however, stressed that it’s very important to them to prove they are an “every-down linebacker” one way or another.

That will come down to proving they can be an asset in coverage, which is more important than ever in the modern NFL.

Davis hasn’t played much Will linebacker in his career. But the Saints think he has the traits to do it, and Davis said he has worked hard in recent years to become a better coverage linebacker.

“That’s what you always want to be. I’ve always taken pride in being a three-down linebacker,” said the 6-foot-2, 248-pound Davis, who admitted he didn’t pay enough attention to detail in coverage early in his career, but now considers it one of his strengths.

“I think I got beat a lot more than I was wanting to, especially my third and fourth year in the league. I was thinking because I’m fast and I can run in space that I can guard these guys. But it’s not [that simple],” Davis continued. “It’s a lot more technique that goes into it. And when I started spending my offseason focusing on detailing my coverage, and adding that to being effective blitzing and effective in the run game, it helped me to have more of an all-around game.

“And I try to pride myself on being one of the most elite cover ‘backers in the league.”

Davis just had the best season of his career with the Jets in 2017, playing all 1,115 snaps with career highs of 135 tackles and five sacks.

Likewise, Klein had his best NFL season with the Saints in 2017 after spending his first four years with the Carolina Panthers as a backup behind Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis. Klein was elected a captain in the preseason and finished the season with 54 tackles, two sacks, a forced fumble and four pass defenses in 12 games before he went on injured reserve with a sports hernia.